Fighting just a few hours from his hometown, Sadollah earned a razor-thin split decision over Jorge Lopez at Tuesday’s UFC on FUEL TV 3 event at Patriot Center in Fairfax, Va.

The bout was the fifth of six FUEL TV-broadcast main card contests and followed the evening’s Facebook streamed preliminary bouts.

While it’s Sadollah who often uses his jab to frustrate opponents, it was Lopez who used the technique to his advantage in the early going. Once he established the range, Lopez then worked his way inside and took the fight to the floor.

Lopez found himself in a tense situation in the second, nearly falling prey to a standing guillotine choke. However, Lopez fell to the floor to escape and nearly transitioned to Sadollah’s back before the pair finally separated from a clinch. Lopez again answered with a late takedown in the back-and-forth round.

The final frame drew the ire of the crowd as Lopez looked to grind away against the cage, forcing Sadollah to fight in a defensive posture for most of the round. The boos throughout the frame gave a clear indication as to the overall entertainment value of the bout, but there was still the matter of finding a winner.

Judges didn’t find the task easy, but two of the three favored Sadollah.

“I’m glad I won,” Sadollah said. “In all honesty, this isn’t me being biased towards myself, but I felt like I was doing more to work for the fight. But I know how much weight the judges give takedowns, so I was surprised and happy that I won the fight.

“When I heard him [Bruce Buffer] say ‘split’ then I had a glimmer of hope, but I was still, ‘I don’t think I have this,’ but they said my name, and I’m not going to leave it that close the next time.”

With the narrow victory Sadollah (6-3 MMA, 6-3 UFC) improves to 3-1 in his past four fights. Lopez (11-3 MMA, 0-2 UFC) falls to 0-2 in two octagon appearances and may now risk losing his spot in the promotion after both fights failed to entertain.

The Latest

Sure, UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey ran through yet another opponent in less than a minute, but that wasn’t the only story that mattered at UFC 190. Relive the memorable moments from Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena.

Since the early days when the sport was anything but a mainstream endeavor, the MMA industry has thrived and survived through various websites, forums and, perhaps most importantly, social-media platforms.

In this week’s Trading Shots, Danny Downes and Ben Fowlkes look at Ronda Rousey’s 34-second victory over Bethe Correia at UFC 190 and try to put it into terms that capture the moment without getting swept away by it.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?